Crypto mining from home: things to consider

There’s a lot of gimmicks out there when it comes to crypto mining from home. Can you do it? Absolutely. But don’t get trigger-happy by clicking every link you see or downloading apps promising instant and incredible results. You could easily fall prey to fake apps masquerading as legitimate miners and other forms of crypto theft.

During the pandemic, I got involved with a geolocation-based XYO crypto mining app. I purchased all the upgrades and boosts, including a plastic card with an NFC chip that, when placed on the back of the phone near the NFC reader, maximized rewards. After a year, I somehow only earned about $5 USD.

There were all these promises that if you mined a certain amount of XYO, you'd earn a new PlayStation 5, a 72-inch TV, or some other gadget. I wanted that PlayStation, so I kept grinding, unaware that it would have taken about 13,333 days, or 36.5 years, to earn $399.99, which was the market price of a PS5 in XYO, at a rate of 15 mined XYO per day and the average price of XYO during the pandemic.

Was it a scam? No. But I spent more money than I earned and never mined near enough to get that PS5, although I found the app fun and full of those endorphin-triggering rewards for my brain.

Sadly, this still didn’t bring me any closer to mining for crypto and walking away filthy rich. This was geared more toward slowly generating a passive income with greater rewards depending on how many users joined the network using your invite code. The key is to get this autonomous passive income working without burning through money to keep your crypto mining campaign afloat.

ASIC and the expensive quest for power

Everyone in the crypto mining scene is going to initially tell you some fundamental basics that cannot be ignored. You’re going to need a fast computer. This doesn’t mean to go out and purchase a Raspberry Pi, which is the antithesis of power and more of a novelty.

If you’re serious about crypto mining, you’ll want to purchase specialized hardware known as Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC). Unlike general-purpose CPUs or GPUs, ASIC miners are custom-built for a single algorithm, such as Bitcoin's SHA-256 or Litecoin's Scrypt. These devices allow you to leverage the crypto mining scene effectively, as they are much faster and more efficient than using a home computer.

ASIC miners are built to perform the specific computations required for mining far more efficiently than standard hardware, maximizing hash rates and profitability for tasks like mining bitcoin or other proof-of-work cryptocurrencies.

After computationally solving the cryptographic puzzles in a block, you will be rewarded with fractions of bitcoin or whatever digital currency you are mining. This is why some enthusiastic crypto miners run entire server farms to maximize their rewards.

If you’re rocking an ASIC miner, you’re probably running it 24/7 to increase your profitability. The typical power consumption of high-end ASIC miners, such as the Antminer S19 Pro, is around 2,500-3,500 watts (W).

In a week, you’d be consuming 2,160 kilowats which amounts to approximately $216 USD. So, if your profitability doesn't cover the cost of electricity, yeah… you get the picture. This is significantly higher than running floor heaters and vacuum cleaners.

Depending on how dedicated you are, you might want to use solar energy, with a battery capacity of around 115 kWh with a backup battery, among other things. You will be dishing out more money than you probably are willing to spend.

GPU mining is the way

Using your PC’s Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) is a widely used method for crypto mining, as the GPU contains more memory and computational power than the Central Processing Unit (CPU).

Gaming PCs are ideal, although you can also build one specifically for this task. Popular GPUs for mining include the NVIDIA RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3080, and AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT. Your rig can have multiple GPUs, or you can simply buy a pre-built one.

For example, I have an MSI Crosshair 15 gaming laptop with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 GPU, which is a great option for crypto mining, particularly for ethereum.

As with ASIC mining, you’ll want to join a mining pool to ensure more consistent payouts, as solo mining can be inefficient, time-consuming, and often fruitless.

My girlfriend’s Alienware gaming laptop is rocking an NVIDIA Geforce RTX 4070 GPU, which is highly efficient in both gaming and mining and uses low power consumption, which is obviously the real battle.

Some RTC 3070 cards come with Lite Hash Rate (LHR) restrictions, which means they will have a performance limitation that throttles hash rates for certain algorithms like ethereum to discourage miners from buying up these cards and impacting their availability for gamers. My laptop does not have LHR since these restrictions are generally applied to desktop GPUs.

However, if there’s a will, there’s a way. Some miners have discovered ways to circumvent LHR restrictions with specific mining software like NBMiner, T-Rex Miner, LolMiner, Claymore’s Dual Miner, and PhoenixMiner to name a few.

Choosing a compatible digital currency for your GPU

Bitcoin mining is not suitable for GPU mining but is more suitable for ASIC miners since it relies on the SHA-256 cryptographic algorithm, which is designed to be computationally intensive. Simply put, mining bitcoin requires specialized hardware.

But there’s good news. Unlike bitcoin, ethereum uses the Ethash algorithm, which is GPU-friendly, and can be mined using gaming computers, making gaming laptops like mine an ideal choice for ethereum mining due to its high hash rate, which translates to good profitability.

Downloading the entire blockchain?

If you’re mining for bitcoin or other digital currencies, be patient. Running a full node, which is the entire history of the blockchain (every transaction and block involves downloading the entire blockchain, from the moment its first transaction was made to the present date). If you’re running a full node mining campaign, that’s going to be several hundred gigabytes. For bitcoin, that’s over 400GB.

Downloading the full node isn’t strictly required for mining. However, it is important for network security and self-verification. Full nodes verify that the transaction is valid. This ensures they follow the rules of the network (such as checking digital signatures, ensuring no double-spending, and confirming that the block size and structure are correct).

Moreover, you don’t need to download the entire blockchain if you’re a part of a mining pool, or using mining software. For example, most mining software like Ethminer, PheonixMiner, or T-Rex which is for ethereum mining doesn’t require users to download the full blockchain, since the software merely connects to a mining pool or node that handles the blockchain data.

The software only has to receive the block headers and other relevant information to start the mining process and solve the cryptographic algorithms.

And that’s great, because when I first started crypto mining, I did everything wrong. I downloaded Bitcoin Core, which wasn’t going to run the way I thought on my laptop, and requires you to download the full node – the entire blockchain. The estimated time until the network was fully synchronized was 13 weeks. That’s many years' worth of transactions.

I had to uninstall it.

I used to write for BeInCrypto, and I still find cryptocurrency and blockchain technology extremely complicated and overly dense. However, digital currencies are here to stay. Rather than sitting here brooding on how everyone else seems to be making smart money moves when it comes to crypto, I wanted to keep in the loop as much as my limited attention span will allow in the hopes of making a passive income.